Abstract
The term ‘sustainability’ has become an overused umbrella term that encompasses a range of climate actions and environmental infrastructure investments; however, there is still an urgent need for transformative reform work. Scholars of urban studies have made compelling cases for a more-than-human conceptualisation of urban and environmental planning and also share a common interest in translating theory into practical approaches and implications that recognise (i) our ecological entanglements with planetary systems and (ii) the urgent need for multispecies justice in the reconceptualisation of genuinely sustainable cities. More-than-human sensibility draws on a range of disciplines and encompasses conventional and non-conventional research methods and design approaches. In this article, we offer a horizon scan type of review of key posthuman and more-than-human literature sources at the intersection of urban studies and environmental humanities. The aim of this review is to (i) contribute to the emerging discourse that is starting to operationalise a more-than-human approach to smart and sustainable urban development, and; (ii) to articulate a nascent framework for more-than-human spatial planning policy and practice.
Highlights
Academic Editor: NikosUrban development processes are increasingly under the spotlight due to their potential for contributing to lowering the carbon footprints of cities, to achieving greater levels of sustainability, and to restoring sensitive ecologies and biodiversity hotspots
While some human geography and urban theorists, for example, [13,27,28,29], have engaged with the possibilities of more-than-human cities, so far, there has been no concerted effort to strategically review the literature at this intersection with the aim of informing smart and sustainable urban development and spatial planning practices drawing on the domains of knowledge identified in more-than-human scholarship
We have demonstrated how subscribing to a more-than-human sensibility recognises the intricate ways in which human and nonhuman existences are entangled in urban space
Summary
Urban development processes are increasingly under the spotlight due to their potential for contributing to lowering the carbon footprints of cities, to achieving greater levels of sustainability, and to restoring sensitive ecologies and biodiversity hotspots. Other future directions for research include the role of planning in learning from Indigenous knowledge systems and cultures such as ‘Caring for Country’ [3,4,5]. These issues have been acknowledged as high priorities by the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA), and PIA’s. We present a horizon scan [7,8,9,10] of recent investigations and studies offering a more-than-human perspective on urban planning We elaborate upon these concepts in the main literature review section below. By way of an introduction, ‘more-than-human’ is considered to be an umbrella term that encompasses a diverse set of theories and practices
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